Reliable Information
by Lily S. Brett
Summary: One-shot piece about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, based on the BBC's new series. John wakes early to find Sherlock working obsessively on a case. No slash intended, but feel free to read however you like. Rated for mild language.


**This is a one-shot piece about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Despite my loyalty to Doyle's work, this story came about because of my admiration for Cumberbatch's and Freeman's remarkable performances in the new BBC series. The storyline is original, but I own no rights to the Sherlock Holmes characters or premise of the story, which belong to Arthur Conan Doyle and the BBC. **

John went downstairs in his robe and pajamas, checking his watch as he went. His old regimen of rising before dawn was impossible to be rid of entirely, and sometimes he still woke at four-fifteen as though he had set an alarm. Yawning, he walked into the living room he shared with his flatmate, and found Sherlock pacing back and forth, still dressed in his street clothes.

"What are you doing?" John asked in amazement. "Why aren't you in your bed?"

"I could ask you the same question, John." Sherlock didn't look up, his gaze fixed instead on some invisible thing which he seemed to be chasing around the room, trying to grasp it and make sense of it. "But I don't have to. You're a military man – you probably rose around this time every day for years. I suppose you slept with a watch alarm, which would account for your hair all mussed on the left. You slept with your arm under your ear to hear the alarm. You haven't shaken the habit, and you still sleep with your watch on."

"How do you know I didn't just put it on?"

"It's put an indentation in your wrist."

John saw that his friend was right. "You didn't even _look_ at me!" he exclaimed, more annoyed than amazed.

"I glanced, and I'm right."

John sighed, pulling his robe tightly around himself in the cold room. "I couldn't sleep."

Sherlock detoured into the kitchen, pulling one of the chairs away from the table with his foot and flinging himself into it. John followed him, holding back in the doorway.

"Sherlock, are you _trying_ to kill yourself?"

He had pressed his eye to his microscope, focusing intently on a slide which, to John's eye, held nothing at all. "I'd never have to do that," he said, his tired voice hoarse. "I know any number who would be happy to see it done for me."

"Have you been up all night?" Sherlock's clothes had not changed since the day before, although they were considerably more rumpled now.

"I'm trying to sort out this case. Damn! What is it that I'm missing?" Sherlock pushed himself away from the table and folded his arms in frustration. John shook his head.

"You've got to get some rest. You'll make yourself sick."

"I'm fine."

"Sherlock, I'm a doctor." John was concerned for his friend. "You'll wear yourself out."

"Thank you for your prognosis."

John sat down at the table across from the microscope and the furrowed brow above it. He watched Sherlock's quick hands move, deftly adjusting slides and aiming droppers of fluid over them. He decided to try a different tactic. "Look, what's wrong?" he asked, as gently as he could.

Sherlock jumped up from the table and paced back out into the living room. "The case, John! The case!" he shouted over his shoulder. "I can't rest – I can't eat until I've done _something_. It's all right there, just out of my reach." He sank down onto the sofa and rumpled up his own hair, as though he could shake up the thoughts underneath. John went out to stand at a safe distance from him and asked,

"Then it's nothing to do with not having caught Moriarty when you saw him?"

"What? No. No, I knew I couldn't catch him. Later – I'll do that later, after I've stripped away everything he has to work for."

"Well, you can't do it all tonight. Why don't you go to your room and get a few hours' sleep," suggested John patiently, his own nerves fraying within. His friend did not bother to respond, his gaze far away.

John sat down opposite him. "Who told you that?" he asked finally, the question slipping out before he realized that Sherlock would have no idea what he was talking about.

"What?"

"Well, just – when you had Moriarty at gunpoint, you said that you had been reliably told that you didn't have one. A heart, that is."

Sherlock still did not look up. "Yes?"

"Who said that? Was it in a relationship, or…?"

"No, I told you, that's not my thing." Sherlock's eyes were still fixed on a spot on the rug, but his expression was determined now. "No, no, it was Mycroft, actually."

"Mycroft?"

"Well, he was the first." Sherlock leaned back against the sofa. "Him and the rest of my sorry family. Then came a long line of others. With so many to back them up, I suppose it is reliable information."

"Well, _I_ haven't said it." John offered.

"Ah, there's time." Sherlock snorted a derisive laugh through his nose.

"I never will." John leaned forward in his chair. "What do they know? They can go to hell, Sherlock. I know that's not true. _You_ know it's not true."

Sherlock was silent for a moment. "I wouldn't be so sure it's not, John," he replied finally, looking up. "You'll probably be disappointed."

"No." John leaned back abruptly. "No. You're a human being just like the rest of us."

"Well, but, I'm not like the rest of you, am I? What I do, I do because I'm not like you. My livelihood is _based_ on my difference from you, from those fools at the Yard. I am _paid_ for not being like all of you." He flung himself back on the sofa and threw his legs over the arm so that his gaze was now directed at the ceiling.

"Well, I don't think you're all that different," said John. "I think you like to _pretend_ to be, of course, because you're drowning in this image of yourself: The great Sherlock Holmes and his tremendous brain…his astounding reasoning skills." He got up to his feet. "Just forget all of that for a few hours and try and get some rest. I'm going back upstairs to sleep a bit more, myself."

John went to the door and glanced back. What, he wondered suddenly, would Sherlock be without all his intellect and logic? Without his burdensome brain, would there be _anything_ left of the man with whom he, John, was so familiar? Without his desire to untangle the knotted webs of crime and mystery, would Sherlock find that he had some deeply suppressed desires within him – desires for normalcy, friends, relationships, family? Or, more likely, would his strongly addictive personality consume him, leading him to indulge his self-destructive tendencies? Would his horror of boredom be relieved only by artificial stimulants and danger?

John inhaled deeply, the stillness of the room suddenly palpable, and was grateful for his friend's sake that Sherlock Holmes _was_ the extraordinary man that it sometimes tormented him to be. But this thought was followed by a deep sadness for the fact that, even as a doctor, he could offer no cure for Sherlock's need to keep his mind racing, constantly moving on to the next clue, and the next.

"Good morning, then," he said to the sofa, where the top of his friend's head was barely visible.

There was no response and, as John peered over to see if Sherlock had become lost in another train of thought, he was surprised to see that the great logician had fallen abruptly to sleep, arms folded across his chest in a gesture of resolution.


End file.
